


Prelude : The Illusion of Death

by JoeBass3122



Series: The Architects [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Powers, Alien Technology, Aliens, Body Horror, Far Future, Hard Science, Multiple Protagonists, Near Future, Outer Space, Physics, Science Fiction, Solar System, Space Pirates, Time Skips, Time Travel, gritty sci fi, scientist, weird space stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 15,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22094014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoeBass3122/pseuds/JoeBass3122
Summary: A generation has lived and died, entirely independent from our home world, Earth. The two planets, with their various governments, form a United Planets Government that oversees interplanetary trade and infrastructure. This government is ruled primarily by Earth, which in turn, is ruled by the many nations that she protects.  Many of which look vastly different from what they were a quarter millennia ago. A world utterly changed by the rich resources that can be mined from even the smallest of dead rocks, Earth has enjoyed great success and empowered by this success, they rule the solar system with a tightly closed iron fist.But for some, this grip is too tight, too choking. There are whispers among the fringes of society and the known world, whispers that speak of rebellion, of shifting the balance of power. The system has become fragile, a powder keg waiting for a spark to set it off...
Series: The Architects [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672225
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Prelude to the first book of the Architects series, The Ashes of an Empire. Please let me know what you think!

##  Chapter 1

“Ready! Set! Davai!” Sirius’ shift lead shouted into the crowded elevator shaft.

The two racers sprang from their starting positions and shot down the main corridor of the _Anna Karenina_ like missiles. The ramps to the ship’s many levels flew by and Sirius pushed off as many as he could to add to his flight speed. He paid little attention to his opponent, he needed to focus on not crashing into the bulkheads and ramps. Especially since at the speed he was building up, he would probably break something if he collided. He noticed they were approaching the midway point and stole a glance at his opponent who was already slowing down in anticipation of hitting the final bulkhead before the return stretch.

Sirius had a different idea. It would hurt, but he figured he could go a few more meters at this speed before he _had_ to slow down. He flipped so his legs were facing the corridor’s terminal wall with just a few well-timed pushes off the corridor’s handholds. He relaxed his legs a bit, bending them slightly at the knees and tucked his chin into his chest. He’d seen a few videos of emergency parachute landing techniques from one of the Earth’s militaries and planned to try out what he had learned. He was technically falling, after all.

The physics should work out in his favor. Distributing the force of the impact over the whole body by a carefully sequenced roll would prevent him from taking the full force of the collision on any one part of his body. Of course, that was all theory, he’d never applied it in real life. He had no choice but to try it now, he had already flown way past the point of no return. At this distance and velocity, he could never bleed off enough of his speed in time for the impact to be easy.

The final bulkhead grew closer and closer fast. Sirius could hear people shouting at him to slow down. His opponent, now several meters and more behind him, was shouting too. Sirius could feel a strange sense of euphoria mixed with fear as he neared the immovable wall of the bulkhead. Of the two, he was the less durable.

Finally, he reached out his arms and started bleeding off some of his speed by running his hands on the bulkhead walls and grabbing the ramps as he passed. He was decelerating fast but he would still be in for a rough stop by the time he made contact with the bulkhead. He just needed to hit it right, dissipate what force he could and tank the rest, then turn around before his opponent had the chance to do the same. Hopefully, he wouldn’t break his legs – or worse. Internal bleeds got _bad_ in zero G.

His feet made impact with the bulkhead, his legs crumpled, and he twisted himself to the side into a sort of roll. In that same instant his shoulder impacted violently and then his head. His vision flashed white, but he was already pushing off the bulkhead back in the direction he came, the reaction almost automatic. His vision was slightly blurred, and he guessed that wasn’t a good thing.

He was almost halfway back to the starting point when his opponent finally started the return journey, the race was won. He could hear his crewmembers shouting and yelling on the other side. He couldn’t hear things very clearly and his mind was feeling fuzzy, but he was approaching the finish line and fast. Too fast.

He crashed into a knot of crewmembers waiting at the end of the corridor, they whooped and hollered and dragged him upright. Someone shoved a flask of an indeterminate alcohol into his hand which he took a few large sips of. It only made the room spin more. The ship’s medic snatched it from his grasp.

“You shouldn’t be drinking that! You have a head injury!”, the man yelled at him and pulled him aside. A very drunk crewmate yelled back, “Let ‘im have it, he broke the fuckin’ record!”

The drunk crewmate pulled Sirius away from the doctor and practically shouted in his face, “51.23 seconds!! _51.23 seconds!!_ ” Then the man was pushed back by the medic who responded, “Eh, looks like he broke a lot more than that”.

It was only then that Sirius noticed several large spheres of blood floating beside his head and trailing through the corridor along the path he had taken. He allowed the medic to guide him to the medical center, while behind the two trailed a few drunk merrymakers who cheered him on. He was glad that the doctor shut the revelers out once they reached the medical center, the noise was starting to hurt his head and the attention was getting to be too much. They’d forget about him after a day or two, which suited him perfectly.

The medic stitched up his head wound, then assessed him for a concussion while expressing his utter distaste for their “childish games”. He decided that Sirius was acceptably low-risk and gave him something for the headache that he’d have the next morning with strict instruction to go straight to bed instead of re-joining the party. Sirius complied; he had enough attention for the day. He returned to the small crew cabin his bunk was in and found to his relief that it was empty. He crawled into his bunk and let the doctor’s meds knock him out.


	2. Chapter 1

##  Chapter 2

Next thing he knew, an alarm chirped, waking Sirius up for his shift of the day – if one could call it a day. On ships with such long deployment schedules, day and night became irrelevant. Time took its order from the varied on and off shifts of its crew. It made no sense to base an entire ship’s timetable on the rotations of a planet millions of kilometers away. Sirius, like everyone else on the ship, the _Anna Karenina_ , was working a double shift – a result of an urgent change in mission. A sister ship, the _Karamazov_ , had lost contact with the rest of the fleet. The new mission was to find the _Karamazov_ and see if she needed any help.

The _Anna Karenina_ was a big ship, designed to carry thousands but now she was only crewed with a little over a hundred – the barest minimum to keep her going. For the last 20 years, she operated as a salvage ship. Her sheer size meant that she could easily carry hundreds of tons of ill-gotten ship parts and scrap metal. Owned by shell corporation after shell corporation, the ownership of the _Anna_ eventually led back to the Red Sky Faction, a Mars-based crime ring that practically owned the stations of the two Martian moons and had strong presences on other stations much further afield. Both the _Anna_ and the _Karamazov_ flew their flag.

Sirius pushed off his bunk gently in the zero-g. The _Anna_ had paused for some repairs and was no longer generating false gravity by accelerating. She was an old ship, built during the later Martian colonization days sometime half a century ago. Her insides were constantly being replaced and updated on the cheap by contractors with shady practices which often lead to frequent stops to make sure she wasn’t losing more air than she could afford.

On that note, Sirius’ first shift was to patch up any new holes from micrometeor impacts on the hulls, a full eight hours of mind-numbing work in an EVA suit that smelled of a thousand previous occupants with the most cantankerous chief welder the solar system had to offer. And now his prosthetic left arm was jamming up – most likely from the impact last night – but also because the tactile processors were aging and causing feedback in the form of a constant dull ache. It had been time for a new one since forever, but the newer models cost too much. He was stuck with this one for a little while longer. To make things worse, his head still hurt.

He took his time getting dressed, forgoing his mag-boots in favor of floating through the corridors. Unlike Spacewalkers, the more “polite” term used to describe those who spent their whole lives in low-gravity environments, Planetsiders were almost always uncomfortable in zero-g. They were always finding ways to simulate any fraction of planetary gravity that they could, including simulating walking with the mag-boots on the inside of the hull. Granted, the mag-boots were practical for extended spacewalks – it was easier to accidentally forget to check a tether than to disengage the boots by accident. Hell, getting them to disengage to take the next step while walking was hard enough. Sirius had spent long enough in low to no gravities to adapt to moving in those environments with efficiency and precision. For him, it felt more natural to float than to walk.

Dressed, Sirius floated out from his small shared room to one of the corridors. A few crewmates floated by, having just started their shifts too, and a few Planetsiders were making their way slowly down the corridor, mag-boots snapping to the inner hull with audible thuds. To his perspective, they looked like they were walking upside down, and he gently adjusted himself to match their up-down orientation.

“Hey!” he waved at them as they looked annoyedly, even enviously, in his direction and he pushed off a wall support to glide even more quickly down the hall. He wasn’t moving near as fast as he did last night, but it still knocked the wind out of him when he collided with the ramp to the workshop. “Pizdets!” He swore when he got his breath back. He hadn’t been paying attention. He pulled himself up – hoping no one had noticed, especially his boss for the shift. No luck.

“Two years on this fucking ship, and you’re still running into shit. If you’re not careful you’re gonna break my goddam ship with your thick skull, boy!” Chief Welder Smith yelled at him. Smith was a very thin man. Most of his body was covered in old radiation burns, wizened, and he was mostly deaf in one ear. The only thing keeping him alive was spite.

“If I had known my thick skull was all it would take to down a ship, I would have joined the Navy”, Sirius joked. Smith frowned and went back to his damage map. This was the best possible reaction Sirius could expect from him. The other ways he showed his appreciation for jokes often included throwing heavy objects, or threatening to leave him in the maintenance crawlspace – a threat he often made good on. Sirius had once spent four hours watching his O2 meter tick dangerously low before the man had unlocked the maintenance airlock for him. Sirius figured that the long shifts had sapped the man’s violent energy.

“Fucking officers don’t understand that this ship is going to tear herself apart if we don’t take our time patching all the holes that they put into her with their high G flight plans. Captain wants us back and moving by next shift cycle, asking me to work a goddam miracle on this piece of junk. By the way…” Smith trailed off, an evil gleam in his eye.

“What?” Sirius asked cautiously, wondering what he’d already done wrong.

“I don’t see you in your fucking EVA suit, that’s what! I’ll join you in a minute to double-check the suit’s seal, it’s been a bit fucky lately”, Smith dismissed him.

Sirius left the workshop and floated towards a nearby maintenance airlock. He suited up in an EVA suit, loaded up the schematics, and checked his suit’s stats. Not great. Like Smith said, some part of the ventilation system was leaky, meaning he’d have refill his oxygen more frequently, but otherwise, everything else was going to work just fine. He logged a repair request anyways. Best case it would be taken out of circulation before it failed completely. Worst case he’d be able to say ‘I told you so’. Even worst case, someone else would be saying ‘I told you so’ on his behalf. Smith came in to check the suit’s seal. It was a habit ingrained in those who lived and worked in space. _Always_ check the seals twice. Anything less was suicidal.

The maintenance crawlspace consisted of the spaces between the inner hull and outer hull, some portions sealed off by bulkheads, and others left empty, a maze of support beams keeping everything in place. There was no light here, excepting that which was brought, but Sirius had found that he could spot most of the holes by watching for the starlight to shine through and kept his headlamp dark most of the time. In the darkness Sirius could already see some of his co-worker’s welding rigs lighting the inner hull as they worked their way through their assigned hull patches. The damage report showed a few hundred perforations in his assigned work area. Time to get to work.

Low-G vacuum welding worked a lot differently than it did on Earth. In some ways it was easier, the lack of gravity kept things from moving too much and the lack of atmosphere meant that nothing would oxidize mid-weld. Weight became a non-issue in zero-G, which meant the otherwise very heavy welding gear could be dragged around by even the tiniest crewmember. 

In other ways, it could be more challenging. Vacuum welds cooled slowly which meant he needed to be careful not to contact a hot patch of metal while moving through the cramped space. At best he’d ruin the weld’s integrity and have to go over it again, at worst the heat would melt his EVA suit’s plastics. Even worse, if one of his O2 tanks got too hot too fast…

Another challenge was that the EVA suit’s thick gloves made fine motor skills difficult, not impossible, but difficult. Add that to Sirius’ malfunctioning prosthetic and it was a wonder he’d passed the qualifying exam at all. If he didn’t get a new arm soon, he might not be able to pass it the next time around and there weren’t many jobs that made the same kind of money.

After nine and a half hours, Sirius was finally done with the last weld for his first shift. While working he had discovered a few cracks in some support beams that had cost him and a team of other welders their one break between shifts. Tired, he stopped at his cabin to briefly freshen up, change into his officer uniform, and then head back up the corridor, this time to the executive decks where the captain had called a meeting. He made sure not to crash into anything this time.


	3. Chapter 3

##  Chapter 3

Assembled in a meeting room on the second-to-last deck was the relatively small handful of people that comprised the executive crew of the _Anna Karenina_. Sirius kept to the wall, letting himself blend in and maintain a semblance of anonymity while the captain, a stocky Earth-man with greying hair, began to explain the reason for their meeting.

“As of yesterday, we received a notice from Mars HQ that our sister ship, the supply ship _Karamazov_ , has gone missing. Our orders were to go to their last known location with all due speed and determine if the _Karamazov_ needed repairs. An unfortunate loss of pressure on one of our decks has slowed this progress, but I just received the go-ahead to make the final portion of our journey. Officers will need to prepare the decks for flight at a planned full G, but first, I want to impress on you all the importance of our mission. We are flying into an unknown situation and the _Karamazov_ may be in danger. I want all of you to be prepared for the worst and while underway re-review the protocols for both combat and rescue operations. Shit might get rough, you’re dismissed”, The captain waved everyone out of the meeting room. Sirius followed his crewmates out, only to be stopped by the first mate before he could leave.

“The captain and I want a quick word with you before you leave”, he said. There was something about the man’s face shape that always gave off the impression that he saw himself as better than everyone else. That, and his behavior too.

“Oh, shit, am I getting cut? It wasn’t my fault that-”, Sirius cut off as the first mate gave him a look that encouraged him to shut up.

“Just listen to what we have to say”, the first mate explained, then looked at the captain expectantly. The captain took a moment, then began to explain.

“Listen, technician, you’re new to these decks, so you probably haven’t been sucked into the ‘office politics’ of the upstairs yet. Your work profile seems to agree on that point as well”, the man paused. “Actually, outside of Chief Welder Smith, you don’t really seem to see much of anyone consistently, do you?”

“Could you get to the point, sir? I appreciate the check-in, but I doubt my social life matters that much to you”, Sirius answered. _I wonder where this line of questioning is supposed to lead?_ He couldn’t remember the last time that anyone he’d worked for had pulled him aside for any kind of face-to-face conversation. _Is this a bad sign? Or a good one?_ He asked himself.

“The point, technician, is that I’ve been hearing some people on this ship expressing some rumors that the _Karamazov’s_ loss of contact was an inside job. A product of mutiny. And perhaps, these same people are getting some dangerous ideas. It could be, that as soon as we find the _Karamazov_ these two groups might join and forge a larger rebellion. You know how it goes, just as well as I do”.

Sirius nodded. Mutiny was becoming increasingly more common. Earth-Mars tensions were increasing which was starting to cause a lot of dysfunction on ships with more diverse crews. Like the _Anna Karenina_ , there were thousands of ships run by a small handful of Earthers outnumbered by the rest of the crew coming from the Outer Planets or Mars. Combine that with long travel times, overlong workdays, and relative isolation from the rest of the world, a series of small feuds could build up into full-scale rebellion and violence before the ship hit its next port.

“Now, my interest in your so-called social life was twofold. First, to determine if you might be one of them, and second, to see if I can trust you”.

Sirius laughed at the thought of the captain trusting him for anything beyond the barest minimums of his job description but the man’s expression betrayed no trace of humor. The First mate glared in response to his sudden outburst and he realized that they were being serious. “Why do you need me? You’ve got a shipful of other officers more trustworthy than me”, Sirius explained, “Why aren’t you asking one of them?”

The captain shrugged, “I was assigned to this ship because the last guy quit at the last minute. Almost all of our current set of officers have stronger loyalty to the previous captain than to me. It doesn’t help that I’m from Earth – from what I understand most of the crew have a problem with that”.

“You read my file; you know how I ended up here” Sirius argued. He wasn’t quite sure what he was arguing against. More work probably. Whatever it was he didn’t want to be involved, “What makes you think that I don’t also hate you for being from Earth? I grew up as a Program kid, barely had time to learn how to walk before I was shipped off to work on a mining station for the benefit of rich Earthers. Doesn’t give me much incentive to be good friends or take a bullet for you, if that’s what you’re asking”, Sirius asserted.

“Which is exactly why I’m asking. If the crew turns, it’s gonna be useful to have a man on the inside. You would be the least expected, given your history. And with your job designations, you have access to the most tactically important decks: the engineering decks and the executive decks. Basically, if the ship was locked down due to mutinous action, you’re probably the only person who can move freely between them without being questioned”.

Sirius considered it. The man was right on every single point so far, “I have a feeling that it wasn’t just pure chance then, that I got those jobs. How long ago has this been planned?”

“Since I got on this ship. I make it a practice these days of having a contingency for that sort of thing. Did my research, and your name popped up as the best possible candidate for the sort of project I’m suggesting”.

“I respect you enough that I won’t tell anyone you’re shopping for moles but that’s as far as my respect goes. I don’t really want this job bad enough to say yes to being your informant. I don’t mind taking my leaving papers right now if that’s what’s at risk”.

The captain shrugged using his hands to exaggerate the movement. “It is what it is. Just a shame though, I understand your prosthetic is in need of replacements. I just happened across one with full tactile sensation, the latest processors, and all the extras a guy could want. I suppose I could find someone to sell it to instead…” He trailed off.

Sirius was torn. On one hand, he really didn’t like the proposed assignment, made him feel like a snitch, and on the other hand – well – he couldn’t feel his other hand, thanks to his rusty piece-of-shit prosthetic. He did the math in his head, it would have ordinarily taken him another year of working to earn enough to repair the current arm, twice that to replace it with the lowest-end model. The captain had a convincing argument.

“Fine. I’ll take the job, but I’m not about to take any bullets for anyone”, he conceded. Sirius hoped he wouldn’t have to make good on it anytime soon. With any luck, his contract would run out in a month or so and nothing would happen between now and then. There were plenty of other legitimate jobs that didn’t require a background check.

The captain nodded, “Heard. Wait for my orders, they’ll come through the first mate instead of me, would hate to blow your cover so soon. Dismissed”.

As Sirius strapped in for the next leg of the trip, he took some time to go over the captain’s request in his mind. The captain must have felt really threatened if he needed to ask a random tech for backup. _If he’s right, how many officers does he think are corrupt? And…What the hell am_ I _going to do about it?!_


	4. Chapter 4

Finally, the Anna Karenina’s engines began to power down. Her massive drive fired as she slowed her forward progress until she stopped, a single, tiny, dot of void where the stars didn’t shine through. As she slowed, the weight of acceleration-induced gravity began to lessen and her crew breathed an almost simultaneous sigh of relief in their various quarters. They’d only had a short 10-minute respite while the massive ship had flipped a full 180 in order to begin the deceleration period. Sirius took a deep breath, his whole body ached from the extra weight and the poorly padded flight chair. He would probably find some pressure bruises on his back and legs later.

He fished around in one of his uniform pockets and found a small bag of painkillers. He took one and while waiting for it to work he watched his workspace screen light up as his crewmates started scanning the area for the lost Karamazov. With any luck, she’d pop up pretty quick, they’d find out why she went dark, then head on back to Deimos, and he’d sign up for another job on another ship with less drama. But not after a nice long shore leave where he’d get the new arm fitted – he was holding the captain to his payment regardless what happened – and probably spend most of his paycheck in the cheapest hole he could find to rent with plenty of cheap drugs and booze to keep him feeling good until his restlessness motivated him to find a new job.

With this in mind, and the painkillers setting in, he actually felt pretty good for once. He waited for a tone from the computer saying that the Karamazov had been identified. And he waited. And waited. A few minutes later, they received call from the captain’s desk. He watched his crewmates look increasingly agitated as they tried to explain what they were seeing; the Karamazov wasn’t there – it just wasn’t. They ran a few more scans, this time widening the search to capture everything in the area.

What turned up was disappointing. Instead of a massive supply ship filled to bursting with both legitimate and illegitimate goods, there was a debris field that spanned many, many kilometers in all directions. There was nothing left of its source to identify it, it had practically turned into dust.

“Wow”, Sirius muttered as he saw the scope of the destruction. Nothing was left that was bigger than a standard wrench and it would take them weeks to sort through all the pieces of the wreckage to determine what ship it came from, for all they knew some random tanker had blown and the Karamazov was halfway across the galaxy, none the wiser. _We’re really gonna have to sort through all this shit._ “Fuck”.

 _But where are the rescue boats?_ He thought as he evaluated the on-screen data, all ships had a small fleet of emergency boats. _They have beacons, why aren’t any of them going off?_ Even with the boats destroyed, the beacons were designed to keep shouting their location no matter what. They were built tough and had their own power supplies. Even in a mess like this, the beacons would still be going until someone turned them off, manually. _Except they aren’t, which means they didn’t have enough time to turn them on. Or maybe, the boats got picked up by someone else who turned them off._ He checked the logged flights for the area. None were recent. A few mercantile barges ran through last month, but they hadn’t been in the area more recent than that. He checked the currently logged flight plans for the area, and their intended trajectories and berths. None would pass through here for a long time. The Anna Karenina was the only one here and would be the only one for what looked like months.

Something felt off, never mind the destroyed ship, but as he looked at the registered flight plans, he felt uneasy. He stared at the list, then selected all of them, and placed them on the same map. The solid lines were completed flights, the dotted ones showing the trajectories of ongoing ones. They all seemed regular enough. He placed a marker at the Anna’s location. Then it hit him. All the planned flights paths curved around the Anna Karenina’s location, leaving a literal dead zone for hundreds of kilometers between them. He called up older flights, within the last year and placed them on the map as well. Literally hundreds of flights through this area and there was still a gap of space that everything changed course to avoid. The Anna, and the Karamazov’s last locations were dead center of this empty zone.

_But why not_ this _spot? Why would they go around here?_ Since space was mostly empty, there was no reason to make flight plans all that complicated, just point the front of the ship at the destination, burn to get up to speed, flip, then burn again to slow down - simple. But each of the ships whose trajectories would have taken them through this spot had diverted course, at roughly the same distance from the epicenter of this phenomenon – all except for the Karamazov and the Anna Karenina. _Almost as if they had been warned off from here. The captain’s gotta know, this looks bad._ He thought whas he eva

He sent a message request to the captain’s desk, flagged it as urgent. The first mate popped up on the video feed. “Cap’s busy, and I’m busy too, so if this is going to help us out here, you better talk fast, otherwise, save this for later”.

“Take a look at this data”, he sent the map with the data points he was looking at and waited for the first mate to check it out.

“What am I seeing here, techie? Why was this flagged as urgent?”

“This place, the shipping routes are actively avoiding it, no one’s been here since, I dunno, a few months - aside from both us and the Karamazov. I don’t want to be assuming anything, but I think we need to get out of here. Or we might end up like the Karamazov”, Sirius told him.

“That’s a pretty bold claim there, kid, but the data checks out. I’ll let the captain know once I can”, the first mate said, his tone somewhat dismissive.

“No, tell him _now_ ”, Sirius insisted, “this is too suspicious to wait on, we don’t know what kinda timeline the Karamazov was dealing with – we can’t afford to wait”.

“Now”, the first mate said, looking a bit miffed, “just because the captain trusts you for his ‘secret mission’ doesn’t mean you can start giving orders on this ship. You’re still the lowest guy on the totem pole, and I could have you put even lower for that remark”.

“Fuck you, get the goddam captain, or I’m coming up there myself”, the high from the painkillers was making him a little more assertive than usual.

The first mate’s response was to close the connection.


	5. Chapter 5

“Fuck!”, Sirius slammed his fist on the keyboard. He then slapped his chest restraints, they clicked, and he was freely floating. He pushed off of his chair and floated towards the elevator. He swiped his ID chip but the access panel blinked red. He swiped again and was denied again. The first mate must have locked him out already. Taking a chisel he had kept in one of his utility pockets, he pried the panel’s face off the wall and cut a cord, killing their power supply. The elevators were designed to fail closed, but they were also designed to be easy to pry open in event of a failure. A safety design to prevent people from becoming trapped during power failures. He used the same chisel as a pry bar, the doors slid open. He floated over to one of the access ladders and climbed up the shaft.

The elevator was situated halfway up the command decks on level 3. Spaceship elevators were designed specifically to prevent people from being trapped, much like everything else on this ship there were multiple mostly airtight, but easily accessible entry points, especially if you knew how a ship was wired, to just about every room, elevators included. The elevator had three access points, one each on the top and bottom that lead out to the elevator shaft, and the traditional one leading out to the different levels. 

He disengaged the lock on the bottom elevator hatch, trusting his luck that no one was already in there, might be a bit troublesome if there was. His luck held out – it was empty. Closing the bottom hatch, he did the same with the top hatch, passing through the elevator. The ship designers had really sacrificed security in the name of safety. Then again, the Anna Karenina was just a salvage ship, in combat, she had no chance but to surrender or self-destruct.

He rose up through the levels, finally reaching the Captain’s own deck at the top. _I’m probably gonna get shot for this, fuck it_. He pried open the doors and pressed himself into the side wall as they slid open waiting for shots to ring out. Except there were none.

Cautiously, he floated onto the deck, waiting for the moment he’d be turned into parmesan, or was it swiss cheese? He hadn’t seen either in his lifetime except in pictures. But he didn’t get turned into any form of human cheese, instead, the captain was staring at his desk monitor, unaware of Sirius’ intrusion. He stood, glued to the deck by his mag boots, but even in the zero g, Sirius could tell he was defeated, his posture still slightly slumped and his arms floating idly by is sides.

“…Captain?”, Sirius asked hesitantly.

The captain startled, his arms pinwheeling a bit in the low gravity, Planetsiders rarely handled low gravity well. Sirius let him panic a moment and then floated over and pushed the man down by his shoulders into the deck, letting his feet have contact with a solid surface and a minimal sense of weight. It was what he had been trained to do when Planetsiders lost their sense of orientation, give them something to establish an up-down sense of direction and then they’d be fine again.

The man relaxed, and Sirius floated over to a wall pharmaceutical dispenser and bought a dose of anti-nausea drugs. He floated back to the captain and pressed them into his hand, “Take these”.

The captain took the pills, dry swallowed, and looked a lot steadier than before. “Thanks, tech”, he looked pale.

“What the fuck is going on? I talked to the first mate, sent along a warning, and he locked me out! Is this some sort of conspiracy? If so, I’d like to get the fuck out of here, and I don’t mind using you as a human shield if it will get me off this boat”, Sirius told him.

“I guess it’s time for the truth, huh?”, the captain said tiredly, “The truth is, we were specifically told to come here, this spot. They told me, if I flew the Anna Karenina here, I’d get double-pay, and whatever happened – ‘whatever happened’ was the most detail I got – I’d be on the first ship out. But the data you sent, I saw that too, and I agree, whatever happened here will probably happen to us if we don’t get out of here. But that mutiny I was worried about? It chose the worst time to happen _and_ I’m coming to the realization that HQ probably lied about the getting me home part. So now, he’s locked me out of the controls and whatever happens – I can’t do anything about it”.

“The First mate’s in on it?”, Sirius asked, he was surprised. Everything else made sense.

“When I first got here, I knew I needed to get a team of people loyal to me as soon as possible, and the first mate, he approached me first, suggesting the same thing. I was too new to the ship to be suspicious; I still believed the officers had some sort of loyalty to their captain”.

“So, you believed him?”

“Yeah, looking back, he seemed too eager to become my confidante, but I chalked it up to initiative”, the captain shrugged.

“So, let me get this, you – and HQ- sold us out to whatever’s out here, and somehow, you’re still the victim here?”

“Give me a chance to make this right, here, if you still don’t believe me – I’m transferring ownership of the arm to you, right now”, the captain turned to his computer and clicked through a few windows. “Look, it’s yours, just help me get out of this and you can pick it up when we hit Deimos – that’s all the bargaining chips I’ve got”

“Seems to me, I could just cut and run right now – leave you in this shit while I head for an escape boat and try my chances at the mercy of strangers. Arm’s mine now. Would be a whole lot better than being blown into dust by whatever’s hanging around here” Sirius told him.

“You wouldn’t”, the captain said, he seemed convinced of that.

“I wouldn’t, huh? How do you figure that?”

“Sure, you joined up on a pirate ship. Sure, you have a history with the gangs on Deimos, so would anyone with your background. Even so, I don’t think you’re all that bad of a guy – no matter what the stereotype is of you JSEP types. For one, you never signed on for a combat ship, never signed on to a role that required you to definitely hurt or kill civilians. I get it, you’re mad at the system, it has definitely done you wrong. But you’re not a bad guy, that’s why you signed up on a support ship. I’ve seen your record, you have ethics, as fucked up as they may be, you still have a line you won’t cross. Well, aside from once”, he gestured at Sirius’ prosthetic.

“Fine, I get you out of here, but I want something extra plus the arm, right?”

“I’ll double your earnings for the trip, with that, you can buy yourself a new identity and passage to whatever rock or tin can you feel like going to”.

“It’s a deal, now, have any guns on this deck?”, Sirius asked him.

The Captain showed him a small armaments locker which contained a few non-lethal tasers and charging clips, “It’s not much, but better than nothing, do you have a plan?”

Sirius thought for a moment, “Can I see your computer?” The captain nodded. Sirius opened a few schematics of the Anna Karenina and looked for the best routes from the executive decks. “I think I have an idea, but it probably won’t be convenient for you”.


	6. Chapter 6

Crawling through an old maintenance shaft, Sirius had his suit’s radio muted. He had been right, the captain was not a fan of crawling through old, dusty, maintenance shafts in a bulky EVA suit. He’d made him lose the mag boots; it was faster to float than to walk. Since they had set out, the captain had been mumbling under his breath about the less than satisfactory situation and it was starting to wear on Sirius’ nerves. Sirius was willing to bet that the last time the captain was on the float in an EVA suit was before he was born.

Sirius had spotted these old maintenance shafts on the captain’s computer. They were old, old enough that the entrance on the captain’s deck had rusted shut. Using his chisel and a lot of profanity, he managed to crack it open enough to get them through, Luckily, the tunnel was airtight enough to prevent the captain’s deck from losing pressure just yet, but Sirius knew that any sudden shift in the metal bulkheads could compromise the seal, hence the EVA suits. They suited up quickly, and Sirius left a little surprise for anyone who wanted to poke around upstairs.

There was a resounding boom, his surprise had been found, which means it wouldn’t be long before they found out their escape path. That meant they needed to move fast. The tunnel let out into the lower decks. He’d have the captain lose his uniform jacket, maybe spread some grease on his face, the lower decks didn’t see much of the captain anyways, wasn’t like he’d be a quick spot as long as he kept a low profile.

They floated to a stop at the exit. Sirius patched his comms back to the Captain’s suit, “We’re going to need to crack the suits, lose your jacket too. Do you remember how to pop open one of these?” he gestured to the EVA suit.

The captain waved his hands in placation, nodding with both hands, a gesture he had picked up from the spacewalkers on his ship. The movement caused him to tumble slightly in the low g. He disassembled his suit, slowly, and pulled his uniform jacket off while Sirius did the same. Sirius scraped his palm across the inner wall of the tunnel, picking up decades of grease and rust. “Come here”, he told the captain.

The man looked dubious, “That shit will probably give you cancer”.

“Better cancer than a bullet in the back”, Sirius shrugged.

“Fine”. He floated forward, and Sirius smudged the residue over his face and arms, then did the same for himself. Using his chisel, he also made a few tears in the captain’s otherwise pristine t-shirt. “There, now you look like one of us. Stick close to me, don’t look too imposing or captain-ly, and we’ll hit the rescue boats before you know it”.

Sirius popped open the final door and looked furtively into the corridor. Empty, so far. He pushed out into the hallway, stopping himself gently at the opposite wall. He waved the captain over, who crossed the hallway less gracefully. Sirius checked his watch, it was between shifts, which meant most people would be in their quarters or the mess hall right now. No better time to hit the rescue boats than now. They were nearly to the lifeboat deck when an emergency alarm sounded and the ship’s lighting changed to red.

“Oh, shit, that’s close quarters combat lighting. People are going to be moving to the lifeboat deck pretty quick, we need to beat them there, or join the crowd”, Sirius said.

“Looks like we don’t have much choice”, the captain motioned toward a gathering cloud of crewmen moving down the hall like synchronized swimmers or dolphins in a pod. They pushed back into one of the walls, and once the crowd passed by, they tagged along keeping to the rear. 

Down at the lifeboat bay, crew leaders were already lining people up to board the boats.

“Dammit, they’re checking IDs, exactly like they’re supposed to do. How are we going to get around that?”, the captain asked him.

“I don’t know, I’ll think of something”, Sirius wasn’t convinced. He looked around for inspiration. There wasn’t much to go on. He floated to a medkit strapped to the wall, looking for something. There, a blood pouch, he grabbed it.

“Hey cap, here’s something. Come here, and pretend like you got your arm chewed up by one of the CNC routers”, Sirius popped the bag and spread some of the blood on the man’s arm and shirt.

“I thought the grease was bad, but _this_ is absolutely vile”, the captain complained, but let him continue.

“Alright, get over here, and do your best to look injured”, Sirius took the captain, holding him with a low grav rescue hold, “You’re too quiet for a guy who got his arm torn up. Surely you can put the waterworks on for the 5 minutes we need to get aboard a boat”, the captain looked outraged for a second, then started whimpering. Sirius nudged him in the ribs – hard, making him yelp for real, “There we go, that’s more like it”.

Sirius took the bloodied, crying man to one of the crew leaders in front of a lifeboat. “This guy got chewed up real bad by one of the machines, let me get him on board and some medical care, then you can check his ID for statistics when we shove off”, he pushed the captain in front of him, showing the bloody mess of an arm. The crew leader turned his head in disgust and waved them through, “Go on. I’ll find you two later”.

Sirius dragged the captain onto the boat and deposited him into a flight chair. Strapping him up, he sat next to him and strapped himself in. “So far, so good”, he muttered to himself, he had no idea what he would do once the crew lead came back to check IDs, but he figured that’d he’d handle it as they went. For now, he was exhausted, he’d just come off two shifts nonstop without rest. Barely had time to realize he wanted a nap before he slipped from consciousness.


	7. Chapter 7

A small fleet of 10 lifeboats had taken off from the now empty shell of the Anna Karenina. Floating together in a tight cluster, they would set off in the direction of Mars, enough supplies to last several weeks of the slow crawl back to more traveled space. Once their beacons were in range of friendly ships, they’d be picked up and probably shipped back moonside after an all-too-brief investigation and then reassigned to a new ship.

But why had they taken off? What had gone wrong and what had triggered the CQC lights? Even while unconscious, a small part of Sirius was questioning the events of the day. It made him anxious, but he didn’t realize it until he had woken up, his arms crossed tightly in a knot across his chest. Someone had nudged him. He relaxed, but only for a moment, then he heard the captain mutter “I think we’re about to be found out”.

Sirius looked around carefully through half closed eyes, pretending that he was still asleep in his chair. They were on the first of two decks on their lifeboat, this deck comprising of “living space”. It was a sparse, open room with bunks, some lockers, and flight chairs bolted to the walls, and a few metal tables and chairs bolted to the floor. On the other side, he could see a small group of crew, talking in hushed whispers, occasionally throwing back glances at the two of them. Sirius let his arms relax, slowly bringing them down and patted the flight chair, looking for something helpful. He found one of the support struts had rusted where it met the floor, all he needed to do was loosen the top bolt where it met the chair and it would come free. Still trying to look asleep, he started to loosen the bolt. Its edges were sharp, it wasn’t meant to be loosened by fragile human hands, and it cut into his finger pads with each twist.

Suddenly, the whispers stopped, something was decided, and a huge man Sirius had met once or twice between shifts lead the small group in their direction. Sirius closed his eyes for real, trying to look convincingly asleep. He suddenly forgot how to relax, the muscles in his legs tensing, but he kept still.

“You know, they say that good captains always go down with their ship, so it’s pretty obvious which kind of captain you are”, a voice that Sirius was sure came from the big man said.

“I don’t know what you mean by that, I’m just a mechanic”, the captain told him.

“No, you aren’t, _I’m_ the one in charge of the mechanics”, Big Man laughed, “still – that’s a pretty clever disappearing act you pulled, one that requires some insider knowledge. So, you either are an expert in ship design, or I’m thinking maybe you got some extra help. They’re saying this tech went missing shortly before the alarm was sounded, then he’s seen bringing you aboard one of these boats, did he work with you?” Sirius couldn’t see but he was sure they were referring to him. He quickened his pace, unscrewing the bolt thread by thread.

“What?! This guy? No. I’ve never seen him until today. After I covered myself in blood from one of the emergency kits, I just waited for the first idiot to stumble by. Put on a whole performance, I did, and he fell for it. Poor altruistic bastard”, the captain said. _That was surprising_ , Sirius reflected, he had been sure that the captain would sell him out. _I wonder why._

The bolt came loose and as he fumbled for it his hand knocked it into the wall where it bounced into view with a clatter. _Shit_.

“Seems the poor altruistic bastard is only pretending to be asleep, why don’t we ask him his side of the story”, Sirius was shaken roughly, he opened his eyes to see Big Man’s face close to his.

“What? What’s going on?”, he asked as innocently as he could manage before he was pulled roughly from the seat and placed just far enough from any handholds to be essentially stuck floating. Big Man was smart.

“Let’s have a look at what you were working on, huh?”, Big Man didn’t take long to find the now mostly loose piece of metal. He pulled it free and looked at it. “Pretty clever, but it wouldn’t have been much help. Six of us versus the one of you, and a very out of shape old man. Not good odds”, he passed it off to one of his followers who seemed quite eager to hit someone with it. He then pulled the captain out of his chair too, the group surrounding them.

“I told you, he isn’t working for me! Wrong place wrong time, you know?”, the captain insisted.

“I would have bought your story, really. But a really important somebody warned me you’d have a backup”, Big Man explained, “In fact, he’s got something to say to both of you right now, come with me”. The two were dragged into formation by Big Man’s followers who herded them up the ladder to a miniaturized executive deck. A man was seated in the crew lead’s chair, the First Mate.


	8. Chapter 8

“Wonderful, you’re both awake!”, the First Mate exclaimed with mock cheerfulness. “I have so much I want to tell you about, but sadly, not enough time. So, we’ll stick to the short version, take a look”, he waved to a large overhead monitor showing a live feed of the exterior of the Anna Karenina. She floated in space, a massive hulk of metal and composite, bereft of life. “A beautiful ship, she served her purpose well, but soon she will meet the same fate as the Karamazov”, he said simply.

“So, it _was_ mutiny that killed the Karamazov?”, the captain asked quietly.

“Yes, and this same mutiny is being carried out not only on Red Sky Faction ships but hundreds of ships across the galaxy, overthrowing our Earth overlords. Soon a new empire will rise from their dust, led by us, the workers of these ships. By the people who have _earned_ their positions with hard work and expertise, not those who merely bought them” the first mate explained fervently, he had clearly rehearsed these lines and was excited to finally say them.

“Seems like a real people’s revolution, huh? All the crew of the Karamazov are gone, unless you know where they went, I guess they didn’t _earn_ their positions enough for you. Well, more blood for the cause, right?”, Sirius remarked.

“I forget, what exactly would you call that fiasco you were involved in a while back? A guy like you really shouldn’t be arguing from a point of moral superiority”, he said pointedly. “What happened to the Karamazov’s crew is still unknown. Likely some unfortunate tragedy. A hitch in the plan, or as you say so elegantly, more blood for the cause. And soon, both of you will join them”.

“So, all of this was a set-up? The mission, this location, even the emergency evac?”, the captain asked.

“Indeed. The Anna will find her eternal rest here, in the ashes of the Karamazov, a nearly poetic end for them. We’ll invent some likely sob story as to why she went down, and the revolution will continue, albeit without you two”, he turned to address Sirius, “I had really hoped, Sirius, that you would refuse to help him, given your background with Earth and Mars. I had _really_ thought that literal government-sanctioned enslavement would have been enough reason for you to see the light. You would have made a great ally. Too bad, I guess you’d prefer that injustice continues without reform”, the First Mate concluded.

Before he could retort, a small flash of light caught Sirius’ eye, “If this was all a set-up, can I ask who the _fuck_ is that?” He said pointing to the ship’s radar map. A dot had appeared, travelling fast, almost too fast for a regular ship. Sirius almost thought it was some sort of fast-moving space rock, until the targeting alarms started to sound. It was scanning them. That was definitely not typical space rock behavior. The First Mate let his composure slip as he heard the warning go off, an expression of real surprise on his face, “Get those two to the airlock” he snapped.

“Are we gonna throw them out?” Big Man asked, he seemed conflicted, their oncoming visitor must have given him pause.

“Hmm…No. Not yet, the Captain might make an excellent bargaining chip depending on who these people are. Just get them contained in the airlock, if they’re still here once this is over, I’ll let you do the honors. You can take your disappointment out on the skinny one. Now go!” the First Mate shooed them away.

Big Man’s pack herded them down the ladder and through the living quarters. The few crewmembers who didn’t seem to be a part of the clique watched with some sort of morbid interest, but there was no moral outrage, no protest. Sirius knew the feeling, having been one of the onlookers more than a few times. It was easier to accept that some people were destined to fall out an airlock, and that those people wouldn’t be them. Until it was.

He didn’t feel too surprised that he wasn’t afraid. This wasn’t the first time he’d faced down the void. But last time, he’d been lucky enough that somebody had cared enough to help. This time, he wasn’t feeling so lucky. He still felt calm. Probably because he knew that what was coming was inevitable. It had been a 20-year long road to get to this point, but he’d known since forever that he’d never get to grow old and die peacefully in his sleep. The statistics just weren’t in favor of that. He glanced at the captain, if he was scared, he wasn’t showing it either.

Instead of afraid, he felt curious about the approaching ship. Based on its speed, the dot on the radar must have already cleared the distance between where it popped up and where their ships were located. It had come from nowhere; the radar had only picked it up at half of its potential sensitivity range. _Why didn’t the radar see it until then? Some sort of new stealth tech?_ Even the most advanced battleships he knew of lacked that kind of capabilities – they always had some kind of giveaway. _Had it been keeping dark until it noticed us? Was it_ waiting _for us?!_ _And how would that work? Is it a new build design or material? A coating? Some sort of interference?_ He let himself retreat into his thoughts, working the problem, until suddenly he was hurled back into reality.

The floor. He was on the floor. His head hurt. He pulled himself up to see that everyone else was on the floor too. The ship must have accelerated without warning. His tongue hurt; he had bitten it when his head hit the floor, but it seemed to be in one piece. Big Man pulled himself up and he looked pissed. Grabbing the captain and Sirius he threw them in the tiny room of an airlock and set the doors to be locked. “Have fun”, he mouthed and then disappeared.

The airlock wasn’t designed to hold crew during maneuvers. It lacked flight seats, and there were a few sparse handholds designed to maybe hold one or two people in full g for standard use. Sirius doubted they’d be much help if the ship started evasively maneuvering. Which of course, was what had to happen.

One moment Sirius was on the “floor” of the airlock, and the next he slammed into one of the walls as the tiny ship changed direction. Sirius wrapped his arms around his head and curled up as small as possible, shouting for the captain to do the same. As the ship dodged and accelerated the two bounced into the opposite wall, the ceiling, each other, and all over again. He could hear someone yelling obscenities, maybe it was him. His hands connected solidly with a wall, he could hear the crunch of bones breaking, but the adrenaline was keeping the pain at bay, for now. He just focused on staying small and protecting his head. He didn’t have to focus for long. With one final shudder that sent the two into the floor, the ship stopped completely.

With the absence of artificial gravity, the pair floated up, the weightlessness a blessing on Sirius’ battered body. Cautiously he uncurled himself, assessing the damage. His fingers were broken on his good hand, and his prosthetics plastics were also cracked, a lot. The arm’s actuators had finally given out and the whole thing was basically trash. He clumsily disengaged the arm’s straps and let it float free from his body. As soon as the connection was severed, the feedback pain disappeared. So, that was good. He had no idea if he’d broken anything else, and he hoped there wasn’t much internal bleeding. The pressure buildup from the internal bleeding could be fatal and the medical equipment on the boat wouldn’t help much in low g. He checked on the captain. The man was out cold, his nose was broken – smashed more like. If he survived the coma, he wasn’t going to be much of a looker.

The ship shuddered again, leaving Sirius to wonder what had happened. The airlock was a purely functional room and it had no screens or windows. Basically, they were trapped in a small box, and the only people who could let them out might be dead. He kicked the inner door a few times. To his surprise, it slid open.

On the other side of the airlock’s inner door floated a considerably rougher looking Big Man. “There’s been a change of plans”.


	9. Chapter 9

The captain had been placed in a flight chair on the lower deck, a crewmember set to monitoring his condition. Sirius and Big Man floated in the small executive workspace which now lacked the First Mate.

“You probably already guessed, but that ship you spotted wasn’t friendly at all. We lost four boats before we could put that egomaniac First Mate down and broadcast surrender. I suspect they’re bringing us in now, they weren’t very talkative on the radio, but it beats being space dust. Now, I don’t know what they want, but I’d bet you’ll be wishing you went out the airlock a lot sooner”, Big Man explained almost breathlessly, he was still hyped up on adrenaline. “By the way, I’m Dima”, he offered his hand.

“Sirius”, they shook hands. “Let me guess, First Mate bought you, just like the captain bought me, huh?”

Dima nodded, “Unfortunate that we landed on separate sides, but it’s all business, you know? I didn’t know you were one of us from the Program. No hard feelings?”

Sirius shrugged, “No hard feelings. We both did what we needed to do to get by. So, what are we going to do now?”

“Well, we have no First Mate, and the captain is kind of useless right now, and I _really_ don’t want the job of being responsible for this shit-show. Job can be yours for all I care”, Dima shrugged.

“What’s the conditions of the crew on the other boats?” Sirius asked, it seemed like a captain-ly question to be asking.

“They’re all banged up, like us – possibly worse. It’s too bad we don’t have any doctors with us, some of our guys could really use one. You look like you need one too”, Dima said.

Sirius fished out the bag of painkillers from his flightsuit pocket, “This will work for now, want one?” He offered to Dima who eagerly accepted them. As they took them, Sirius started thinking about what they needed to do. “So, we’ve heard nothing from these guys that just shot at and killed a few of us?”

“No”, Dima shrugged.

Sirius turned to one of the workstations and glanced at what the monitor had, “Did we get an ID on the shooters?”

“Not yet, we got interrupted”, Dima joined him at another workstation and started the ID program again. “It’s not a commercial ship, that’s for sure, not like they’d have that kind of firepower anyways”

“Well, it’s not one of the other factions either, they wouldn’t be this quiet about capturing one, much less two, of ours in one day. Half the system would know by now”, Sirius mused.

“What about police?”, Dima asked.

“No fucking way, we’d be dead already then. They already blew half of us up, easier to do the paperwork on all of us at once and leave no one left alive to say they shot down a bunch of emergency pods”.

“Maybe it’s some sort of military ops that we stumbled onto, seems about right, the radar profile is _tiny_ compared to what they threw at us”, Dima leaned back, his posture defeated, “Which means they’re about to make all of us disappear”.

Sirius went quiet, he wondered how much worse it could get and hoped that right now would be the low point of the day. Still, he needed to do _something_ , at least to feel like they had some sort of control, “Then, let’s show them that we don’t disappear easy. Look, they’ll probably bring the boats in, breach the airlock doors, drag us all out by our ears, and that will be it”, Sirius tapped his fist on the keyboard, “But…I have an idea”.

“What is it?” Dima asked and floated to see the screen better.

“The Anna backed up all flight data to the lifeboats. Of course, they only have space for 36 hours of raw data recording but that’s more than plenty for what happened today”, Sirius explained as he navigated the file explorer on the terminal.

“Oh, come on, they’ll destroy the lifeboats too”.

“That’s why we’ll cut out the memory unit, then hide it” Sirius explained as he went over to a tool closet embedded in the wall and took out two laser cutters, “The memory unit’s not exactly something you can hide in a pocket, or in a lifeboat where it won’t immediately be found. But we have the perfect hiding spot all around us. We’re in a debris field, what’s another piece of debris among the millions”.

Dima nodded as he caught on, “so we cut it out and throw it out the door before we’re picked up, a classic. We’ll need to coat it in radiation shielding to protect the data on it. But how do we make sure it gets found?”

Sirius thought for a moment. “We don’t”.

Dima looked confused.

“Eventually, they’ll find out that one of the memory units is gone, the only way to make sure they can’t beat its location out of us is to make sure _we_ don’t know where it is either. We just have to hope somebody stumbles across it, or if either of us makes it out alive we come back and find it ourselves, if we know the starting point and it’s general trajectory and speed, it makes it easier to simulate where it’s at”.

Dima looked unconvinced, then threw his hands up, “It’s not like we have better options, I’ll get a couple boys up here to help cut out the unit and get a few cans of radiation shielding spray. Meanwhile, you should maybe add an explanation to go with the data, that way if it’s found they’ll know what it is and what to do with it”. Dima floated back to the ladder and disappeared.

Sirius turned back to his workstation and selected a video making program. He knew he looked like shit, but it still surprised him to see his own face staring back at him. His face was thinner than he remembered it being, full of bruises, and extreme exhaustion. He missed his tiny bunk on the Anna more than anything. Still, he began to describe what happened over the last – day? Day and a half?

By the time the docking clamps plucked their lifeboat from the void, the radiation shielded memory unit was already tumbling out into the stars as planned. Dima had come back to the upper deck where Sirius waited.

“I had the crew arrange a little welcome surprise for our friends up there. It won’t do much, probably piss them off more, but knowing it’s there makes me feel a little better”, he smiled and shook Sirius’ hand, “Whatever happens next, it was nice working with you”.

“Same here”, Sirius started to say something else, but it was drowned out by the sound of small explosion, followed shortly by a much larger one. Then the sound of the “airlock breached” alarm. He waited to hear the clank of military-grade mag-boots on metal, or gunshots, or anything. Instead there was a clatter on the lower deck, then a hiss as a gas grenade released its contents. As the gas filtered up to the upper deck, Sirius could feel himself getting tired, whatever was being pumped into the room worked fast. Thanks to the gas, plus his general exhaustion from the day, he went under quickly.


	10. Chapter 10

When Sirius woke up, the first thing he noticed was the gravity. From the uncomfortable way things felt, they must be moving fast enough to generate full-G, or something close enough to it. He could feel his whole body being pressed into the surface he was lying on. That’s when he noticed the rest of the room.

He was lying in a hospital bed, but the room was sterile and devoid of the usual overly cheery warm décor of a regular hospital room. This room was all exposed metal and glass, full of sharp edges. Everything about it said military hospital. He tilted his head up, as much as he could in the higher-than-usual G environment. His neck muscles and spinal cord hadn’t adjusted to the increased pressure, normally adjustment was a slow process. On his remaining arm was an IV port, plugged into a machine, probably inserting oxygenated blood to counteract his diminished breathing and likely a painkiller for his many injuries. He wasn’t the only one in the room, over to his left was another bed, and Sirius recognized the large frame of Dima lying in it.

“Hey…hey, Dima!”, he called out.

Dima started, and looked over at Sirius. He was strapped down so they must have assessed him as a greater threat, which was true, Dima was better suited to life at higher G and would recover faster. Dima looked a bit distant, they probably had him drugged too – these guys were smart. “Hey…” he said woozily and drifted back off.

“Hey, did you see them?”, Sirius asked.

“See who…?” came the answer distantly.

“The guys that got us, did you see them?”

“No…”

“I don’t like this. We have no idea who these people are or what they want, we should at least know _one_ of those by now”, Sirius mused. Dima mumbled some sort of affirmative, and his breathing settled into a more regular rhythm as he fell asleep.

 _Lot of help, that guy…_ Sirius thought. He turned his attention to the problem of where they were. He listened to the hum that resonated in the background. It sounded like air recyclers and a low far-away tone that had to be the roar of an engine, so they were in space, in what sounded like a massive ship. He wondered where the rest of the crew was, probably in other rooms like this one.

He could hear footsteps coming and going outside the room, some muffled voices too, but none that he could recognize or understand. He took another glance around the room, trying to see if he could spot any clues about their location. There was the two hospital beds and their occupants, of course, overhead shone two electric lights that flickered ever so slightly in response to barely perceptible power changes, outside of that – not much else.

He wondered how long it would be before someone came in, it was obvious that they didn’t consider him a threat, even letting gravity do the business of keeping him in place. He must have appeared weak to them. Their mistake. Sirius rolled off the hospital bed and collapsed into a pile on the floor. He used his teeth to rip the IV out of his arm and spat it out. Then he reached onto his leg, near his femoral artery and depressed a small capsule that had been implanted there. His last shore leave he’d paid for a series of capsules to be implanted that were full of stabilizer, helped ward off the unpleasant effects of higher G maneuvers but only for a short time. He felt himself become steadier as the drugs hit and pulled himself up, using the hospital bed for support. His legs ached with the added weight, and his joints popped, and it felt like his stomach dropped a mile and a half. It made him feel sick.

He pushed himself along, trying to ignore how his body was reacting to the gravity. He went over to Dima and pulled out his IV, then he unstrapped the big man. While he waited for him to come back from the drugs, Sirius assessed the door to the hallway. Leaning against it, he tried to engage the door lock, and of course it was locked. He studied the lock mechanism and found a brand name stamped on the plate metal. It was a fairly common commercial lock which made things easier but also seemed kind of odd – a little too simple. If he still had his prosthetic arm, he could bypass this lock using an NFC chip and one of the hundreds of stored lock-breaking programs stored on his arm. Instead he had to go old school. Studying the panel, he looked for a way to compromise it. In the background Dima shifted and mumbled something.

“Morning, big guy”, Sirius addressed him while still glancing at the panel. He could hear the big guy swear under his breath as he took his time getting up.

“You… Need… Help with that?”, Dima asked.

“Yeah, need a way to get past the panel”, Sirius explained, he could feel the stabilizers wearing off and his focus was beginning to dull.

Dima looked back at the hospital bed, thought for a moment, then pried off a small piece of metal, “Here, this should help pop the cover”. Then he saw that Sirius was looking paler than usual, “Let me get it, and then tell me what I need to do”.

Sirius nodded in thanks and walked Dima through the process of forcing the lock to disengage, it wasn’t an easy process – the locks were designed to be difficult to force if you lacked the right technical skill, but Sirius had spent a few years working at one of the main lock manufacturers on Deimos station during his time in the Program.

Reaching the last step in the process, Sirius instructed Dima to cut the last wire, and reached down his leg to pop another stabilizer capsule. Dima noticed this and put a hand on his shoulder, “You should save those for later in case we need to split up, I’ll keep you moving till that happens, just wait here while I crack open the doors”.

Sirius nodded and leaned back while Dima pulled the doors open. They opened out into a hallway, which as they looked out seemed to stretch endlessly, there was a slight curve upwards to it which made Sirius guess that the part of the ship or station they were in was a sort of rotating ring or cylinder. The degree of the curve seemed to confirm Sirius’ guess that it was more a station than a ship.

“Now all we gotta do is figure out how to get the crew out, then find the hangar. I’m guessing it’ll be on the outermost part of the ring so we need to get down there”, Sirius said.

“Easier said than done, let’s go”, Dima put an arm around Sirius, helping him walk into the corridor. Sirius had barely any time to comment on the ease of their own escape when Dima stumbled to the ground and the sound of a gunshot erupted from behind them. The two fell, and Sirius nearly missed being crushed under Dima’s deadweight. He saw a bloom of crimson between the big man’s shoulder blades. He barely had time to realize what was happening.

Sirius depressed another stabilizer and started forward down the hall, trying to get away from their attackers. He looked back and saw a line of guards – or soldiers – in a clunky black armor, their faces obscured with helmets that looked eerie and inhuman. They wore no insignia, no identifying markers, and they advanced wordlessly towards him, each carrying some sort of rifle.

Sirius scrambled down the hall which felt infinite. He wondered if it would ever end. There was no cover here, eventually he’d be gunned down, too, whenever the guards decided to. He took a step and felt his ankle grind painfully, attempted a few more steps, then took to the ground. He pulled himself along with his good arm and leg, but the guards were gaining on him fast.

Soon they had assembled around him as he inched his way across the floor. Sirius stopped, there was no point dragging himself like this. One of the guards shoved his rifle barrel into his back and Sirius waited for them to pull the trigger. Instead there was silence.

“Ah, come on!” Sirius rolled over and grabbed the barrel in his hand placing it on his chest, “Fucking _do_ it already, you cowards” he said as bravely as he could manage. Sirius stared at the black helmets surrounding him, they betrayed nothing that was going on behind them, all he could see was his own desperate reflection staring back, so he flipped them off. When the guard finally moved into action, it was only to holster their rifle on their chest plate, the rest of their team kept their own rifles trained on Sirius. The guard then pulled Sirius up by his collar and dragged him down the hallway, the rest of the team fell into formation behind them in. The group passed the room Sirius and the recently late Dima had occupied and headed farther down the corridor to another nondescript door. They cycled it open and dropped Sirius inside, and then left. Sirius wouldn’t see them, or anyone else, for a long time.


	11. Chapter 11

The room they had dumped him in was smaller than the medical room they had woke up in. It was the absolute average of every jail cell Sirius had ever seen or been in. There was a small platform on the back wall that functioned as a bed, a jail sink and toilet, and even a mirror embedded behind some sort of clear shatterproof panel that was probably meant to prevent him from using the mirror’s glass as a weapon. All the furniture had been cast as a single form, there was nothing that could be disassembled for him to use as a weapon or tool. The door was different from the one he and Dima had cracked; it was reinforced and there wasn’t a service panel on the interior side. The only opening in the door was a small flap that Sirius soon found out was for Them to shove a food tray through. In absence of any proper names, he settled on calling his captors Them.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the room for, the only measurement of time was when They would push food through the door. At first, he would try to catch glimpses of Them when as they did, but they must have had a camera in his cell, because the food would only be pushed through when he wasn’t looking. On top of that, They seemed pretty insistent that they got their trays back, to the point of withholding the day’s food if he didn’t return the tray. The longest he went withholding the tray was three, maybe four, mealtimes after which They seemed to lose patience and he got gassed – the same stuff they’d used on the lifeboats. When he woke up the tray was gone, and mealtimes proceeded as normal. They felt, for some reason, it was important that he didn’t starve himself.

The first few days he spent occupying himself with the question of where he was, what was going on, and who was behind this, but with the minimum of information that he had – he could hardly hope to guess accurately what was going on. There was just too many possible explanations and he often found himself falling into dark and disturbing thought patterns as a result, so he settled on not thinking about it too hard.

Eventually boredom began to set in. He started doing body-weight exercises, if only to occupy himself with some sort of goaled task. He eventually remembered that they hadn’t confiscated the metal piece Dima had given him, and resorted to scratching figures into the walls, one wall was for his drawings – which tended to be crude, and another he used to track how many mealtimes had passed – each one denoted by a tally mark. Eventually he settled into a ‘schedule’ of working out, drawing, eating, sleeping, and lying on the bed letting his thoughts take over.

Sometimes he’d think about the Captain, the first mate, and about Dima. No matter what kind of stuff they did that lead up to this, none of them deserved what had happened. _I wonder if the captain ever made it off the boat alive_ , he thought. Probably not, the man had been comatose for over 10 minutes without significant medical care and he was older. If he survived it wouldn’t be much of a life with the kind of brain damage that likely followed. The first mate had been picked up with them, so he was probably in a similar cell as Sirius, facing the same levels of boredom and anxiety. And Dima, Dima was dead. It was obvious when they passed his body on the way to Sirius’ cell. _I wonder if he had anyone waiting for him back home…_ Sirius hoped he didn’t. Sirius found it easier to go without the restrictions that attachment required – he’d tried it once or twice and hated feeling like he had to account for everything he did. He liked being free to go where he pleased when he pleased. Of course, that wasn’t going to happen now.

After what felt like weeks, came the first change. Every so often the room would be gassed for no obvious reason. Like the other times, Sirius at first tried to resist by holding his breath, but they kept the gas pumping until he eventually had to inhale, then he would pass out. When he woke up, he found marks on his arm, needle marks – they had injected him with something. Whatever it was its effects weren’t immediately apparent outside of minor irritation at the injection site. It made him anxious, but at least he knew what they wanted now – medical experiments. All the secrecy, the technology, it made sense if this was some sort of secret medical experiment. Sirius wondered how the drug they were giving him was going to work - or more accurately – kill him. If this experiment was too sketchy to be legal, it didn’t bode well for his chances of survival. At least right now, it didn’t seem to be doing anything much. This new pattern only lasted for a little while; it eventually became more frequent.

It didn’t take long for him to start feeling a little bit warm, which soon turned into outright feverish. After feeling feverish for a few days Sirius noticed an odd discoloration around the injection sites. A trail of slightly darkened tissue followed his veins, and slowly advanced day by day. The tissue around it was inflamed and tender to the touch. _They must be experimenting with a bioweapon_ , Sirius guessed, _some sort of infection_.

Now that he was becoming symptomatic, Sirius started to feel more dread about the coming weeks. Maybe the reality of the situation was finally settling in, maybe he was finally realizing that he was going to die here – he hadn’t needed to think about that before. The dread gave way to despair as the symptoms advanced and it settled into a sort of dull ache in his stomach on top of the very real dull ache that had manifested. Sometimes he would spend the day lying on the bed, frozen with anxiety. Other times, he would be spurred into action, ranting and raving himself hoarse, beating the wall, the floor, the door – whatever he could reach because he needed to feel like he was fighting this, like he had some sort of choice in the matter. Eventually he would tire himself out and sink to the floor, sometimes he would cry, more often he would be too tired to cry and fall asleep crumpled in a little bruised pile and wake up to start the cycle of despair again. The ache in his stomach would grow, a little every day, and now he was starting to feel a dull ache in his head, like someone was inflating a balloon in the back of his skull.

He tried not to look too often at the injection sites on his arm, they had developed a nasty-looking infection that was spreading upwards. When he did see it, it was irritated and blackened flesh, interspersed with painful white pockets of infected matter that burst on occasion and then seeped reddish clear fluid. The worst spots were an angry red, almost glowing and they burned every time his flight suit rubbed against them. The inflammation had reached past his shoulder, and there was definitely a blood infection.

Sirius’ headache was getting worse by the day, perhaps even by the hour, on top of the near excruciating pain in his stomach. Sometimes it felt like something was moving, slithering about his insides. His ears were ringing, and every new noise stabbed at his ears with deafening aggression. He would sweat, and the normally cold room felt like a furnace. Every day, a tray of food would be shoved under the door, the sound grating on his nerves, and he would stare at the food unable to bring himself to eat it, then he’d be gassed and wake up to an empty cell.

Then one day, They stopped with the upkeep. They shoved the food through for the last time, he spent the day staring at it in disgust, waiting to pass out and start the day again. But he didn’t pass out, and the tray didn’t disappear, and he wondered at that. He wondered if that was a good sign, but he sensed it was probably more likely a bad one. He must have reached the point of being too far gone for regular meals to matter. At least now there was silence. And then the screaming started.


	12. Chapter 12

It would crescendo, reaching a frenzied peak of almost inhuman pain, and then cut off or fall weakly into imperceptibility then pitch back up again. An orchestra of human suffering. Even in the reinforced walls of his cell, the cries were so loud he couldn’t sleep. Eventually, he crawled under the bed where it was darker, cooler, safer. He wished he had both arms so he could cover both his ears, but he could only cover one at a time. _I wonder how long until I’m screaming like them._

Sirius wanted so badly to sleep, and sometimes he did, but it was a fitful sleep full of strange and uncomfortable dreams, dreams that sometimes felt too real. Sometimes he felt like he was back in his bunk in the Program and he was late for something, but he couldn’t get his uniform into regs properly and because of that he was a failure and he wouldn’t graduate from the Program. And then the Warden came in, a tall grim man of 50 years or so, his face set in his signature scowl. He’d make some snide comment, or hurl insults or threaten him. Sometimes he would turn into the Captain, bleeding from his head wound, spouting off nonsense. Sometimes he’d see Dima with a hole in his chest, begging to go home and asking Sirius why it had to be him that got shot, “Why couldn’t it be you?”

 _Why couldn’t it have been me?_ Sirius wondered. It certainly would have saved himself a lot of pain and anxiety if he’d been the one to catch that bullet. Dima was lucky in that respect. He didn’t have to endure being stuck in a tiny and cramped cell, dying of who-the-fuck-knows-what.

These dream-visitors became more frequent, and more real, almost as if they were actually with him in the room. Instead of just one at a time, he could see all three men pacing around the cell, explaining his failures and shortcomings to him, becoming more aggressive. He tried to block them out but trying to do so gave him migraines.

The infection kept advancing, the pressure in his head increasing. It felt like his head was going to explode, the pain leaving him gasping. He had developed a cough, something was stuck in his throat, but it wouldn’t come out, no matter how hard he hacked at it. His body felt weak, and he had given up on trying to count the days. He hardly had the strength to stand, so he settled for crawling and slithering about to move, though he tried not to move too much.

He sometimes could hear outside his door the sound of a cart rolling. He managed to steal a glance through the door’s flap once as it passed. An infected hand hung limply from it, and he recognized the flightsuit as one from the Anna Karenina. He never saw the dead man’s face. It was apparent that They were removing the dead and the cart passed by more and more often.

He found infected lesions not only on his arm, but his legs, back, and stomach too. A very painful one had developed on his face. It stung when the sweat from his fever rolled down into it or when he was seized by a coughing fit. His clothes clung to the weeping sores which always stung when one of his movements tore them away. The Warden, the Captain, and Dima kept shouting at him, their arguments becoming less and less coherent, they shouted phrases, snippets of things Sirius had heard or read, or declaimed in some unknown language. Sirius sometimes yelled back his voice already hoarse from coughing. One day, he found he no longer had the strength to do even that, and sat in silence and agony, letting the noise and torment wash over him, letting his thoughts reel into insanity.

_Find me._

A new voice, it was faint as if it came from a distance. It was not one of the ghosts already haunting him. It was gentler, friendlier. Sirius thought maybe it was a figment of his imagination, some part of his dying mind trying to conjure up some sort of comfort before the end.

_FIND. ME._

The voice became demanding, gently so – without malice yet urgent. The voice was real, as real as Sirius was concerned. He found that he could stand, an odd sort of numbness taking over, like he was only half in control. He didn’t remember what happened next, mostly just a blur of events that all seemed to run into each other and made no narrative sense. He came back to himself in another room, a much different room.

In the center of this room was an odd sort of artifact. Incredibly old, hewn from some sort of stone perhaps. This was interspersed with flowing veins of a purplish growth that glowed slightly and wept a black fluid. The light pulsed slightly, like a slow and steady heartbeat – it was something alive. Sirius felt drawn to it, he wasn’t afraid of the thing. It seemed to beckon to him, and Sirius somehow understood that it was the source of the voice. He approached it, and as he drew near, the infectious masses on his arms and legs also began to glow with the strange purplish light and yet he was unbothered – everything but the artifact was irrelevant now.

Behind him, a door opened, the black-armored guards rushing through. Sirius could hear them shouting but their voices were muted, also irrelevant. What was important right now was the artifact. It demanded his attention, his focus. Gunshots sounded. Sirius observed as if from a distance that he had several gunshot wounds, but he couldn’t feel them or anything else, and they did not slow his progress towards the Artifact.

He felt the artifact become impatient, or was that him who was impatient? It was hard to tell where the lines that separated himself from artifact lay. Its light glowed stronger as he drew near enough to touch it. All he needed to do was touch it, then everything would be okay, the pain would go away. He could go _home_.

The light from the Artifact became blinding as Sirius placed his hand on it. The light drowned out everything else, it shone brilliantly washing out all detail, all the hard edges of existence ceased. Then, all became dark. _It’s time to go home._


End file.
